Adding Bones to Alien

Open your file from the previous tutorial or use T:\School Courses\computercourses\dmd12\alien with arms.max

You should see something like

Change back to the 4 window view

And choose the left view

and maximize it…

Freeze the body of the alien at this time.

1. Creating the Bones

Choose Character – Bone Tools

to see

and click the create bones button…..

Create 4 bones in order

Name the bones in order

Bones_leftbody, Bones_leftupperarm, Bones_leftlowerarm Bone_lefttip

Lets put the bones in claws

Change to the top view

Choose Create Bones again.

Click on the bone_leftlowerarm and create three bones through the claw as follows and then three bones threw the other claw.

Name the bones as follows

Go To Select by Name and see if the bones are linked together properly

Turn on Display subtree to see

We need to do the exact same thing on the right hand side.

This could take a while and the finished product should look like this

with the select names like

lets remove bone_04 and bone_leftip

so both claws look like this

Using the Refine tools might help you to resize the bones so they fit inside of the skin better.

I used refine on the first two bones of the claw to make them fit in the claw better. Do this for both arms

It looks like I better lift the bones on the right side

to

That looks better don’t worry about the tip bones

Add a bone for the nose called bone_nose and bone_nosetip

2. Adjusting the fins on the bones

Select Bone_leftupperarm and bring up its properties…. You should see the fin adjustment settings

Adjust the size of the front and back fin so the bone looks like

and

left view top view

The Fins help control how much of the skin the bone will affect.

Add fins for the rest of the bones except for the bones in the claw and the nose… The bones are already big enough there

It’s important that the bone fins in the head area are quite large

and

It’s possible to colour the bones using the bone tools menu… This makes the bones easier to see

Simple highlight the bones that you want to colour and choosee a different start and end color. When you apply the gradient you get something like what we see below